Congratulations to all the 2015 CAJ Awards finalists!

OTTAWA, April 7, 2016  /CNW/ - The Canadian Association of Journalists is pleased to announce the finalists for its annual awards for outstanding investigative journalism in Canada published or broadcast in 2015.

The winning entry in most categories will receive a $500 cash prize. The recipients in each category will be announced May 28 at the CAJ Awards gala and conference banquet in Edmonton, part of the #CAJ16 annual conference at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel.

Delegates registering for the full conference (May 27-28) in most registration categories get a banquet ticket as part of their registration. Standalone tickets are also available at a cost of $55. Register and purchase tickets today via the conference registration page. Early bird rates for the conference run until May 20.

Awards finalists registering for the conference – either one-day plus gala or full conference – are automatically eligible for a 10% discount off the relevant fee. If your organization wants to send more than five finalists to the conference, a 25% discount is available. Contact us to confirm eligibility and register.

The Don McGillivray Award for the best overall investigative report for 2015 will also be announced at the awards banquet.

Please note the media outlet listed is where the finalist worked at the time their entry was broadcast/published or where the particular entry was broadcast/published. Finalists are listed alphabetically by media outlet. Links, where available, have been provided in the titles of the finalists' entries.

The finalists in the OPEN MEDIA category are:

Nahlah Ayed, Tracy Seeley, Richard Devey
Refugee crisis: Walking across a continent
CBCNews.ca

Harvey Cashore, Frederic Zalac, Dave Seglins, Alexandra Byers
KPMG – The Isle of Sham
CBC News

Dylan Robertson
The Radical Reality: Canada and Homegrown Terrorism
Calgary Herald

Kathryn Blaze Baum, Renata D'Aliesio, Matthew McClearn, Kristy Hoffman, Laura Blenkinsop, Christopher Manza
A Country's Crisis: An Investigation into Canada's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
The Globe and Mail

Andrew Bailey, David Bruser, Astrid Lange, Jim Rankin, Randy Risling, Joanna Smith, Rick Sznajder, Tanya Talaga, Jennifer Wells
Gone: Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women
The Toronto Star

The finalists in the COMMUNITY MEDIA category are:

Travis Lupick
Chasing a crisis: The challenge of caring for Vancouver's severely mentally ill and addicted residents
Georgia Straight

Joseph Couture
Series on homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness
Freelance / London Yodeler

Matt Goerzen
Breaking faith
The Brandon Sun

Ian Hitchen
The Runaways
The Brandon Sun

Gagandeep Ghuman
Here's what got buried under the rock
The Squamish Reporter

The finalists in the OPEN BROADCAST FEATURE category are:

Kathleen Martens
For the love of Matty
APTN Investigates

Harvey Cashore, Terence McKenna, Joseph Loiero, Alexandra Byers, Zach Dubinsky, Chelsea Gomez,, Nicole Reinert, Greg McArthur
The Mob and Michael DeGroote
CBC News – The Fifth Estate / The Globe and Mail

Kelly Crowe, Marcy Cuttler
A price to pay
CBC News – The National

Karin Wells
'In the presence of a spoon'
CBC Radio One – The Sunday Edition

Avis Favaro, Elizabeth St. Philip, Brett Mitchell, Anton Koschany
Gordie's comeback
CTV – W5

The finalists in the OPEN BROADCAST NEWS category are:

Tiffany Foxcroft,Tyana Grundig, Erica Johnson
Coffee Cups
CBC Marketplace

Angela McIvor
Crisis in Rape Funding
CBC News – Nova Scotia

Adrienne Arsenault, Nazim Baksh
Canadian Jihadis
CBC News – The National

Heather Evans, John Lancaster, Sarah Bridge
Border Investigation
CBC News – Toronto

Anton Koschany,Victor Malarek, Sarah Stevens, Brett Mitchell
Phantom Menace
CTV – W5

The finalists in the COMMUNITY BROADCAST category are:

Jennie Russell, Charles Rusnell
Smoked out
CBC News – Edmonton

Natalie Clancy, Paisley Woodward
Real estate seminars exposed
CBC News – Vancouver

The finalists in the CAJ / MARKETWIRED DATA JOURNALISM AWARD are:

Diana Swain, Timothy Sawa, Lori Ward
Campus sexual assaults: The fight to get the real picture
CBC News Investigative Unit – CBC – The National

Anna Mehler Paperny, Leslie Young
Abortions for some
Global News

Bill Curry, Chris Hannay
Infrastructure spending in Conservative ridings
The Globe and Mail

Gordon Hoekstra, Larry Pynn
Pride & Power: First Nations and the B.C. economy
Vancouver Sun

Jeff Outhit
Where trouble lives
Waterloo Region Record

The finalists in the ONLINE MEDIA category are:

Paul Watson
The Wreck Of HMS Erebus: How A Landmark Discovery Triggered A Fight For Canada's History
Freelance / Buzzfeed News Canada

Susana Mas
Temporary foreign workers favoured under express entry
CBCNews.ca

Cate Friesen, Cecil Rosner, Connie Walker, Duncan McCue, Tiar Wilson, Kimberly Ivany, Martha Troian, Chantelle Bellrichard, Joanne Levasseur,Teghan Beaudette, Kristy Hoffman, Donna Lee, Tara Lindemann, William Wolfe-Wylie, Richard Grasley, Michael Leschart, Michael Pereira
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
CBC News

Joshua Hergesheimer
Oil patch downturn puts dreams on hold - a series on the human costs behind the falling price of oil
National Observer

Elizabeth McSheffrey, Linda Solomon Wood, Jenny Uechi
Furry fiasco
National Observer

The finalists in the PHOTOJOURNALISM category are:

Larry Wong
Portfolio entry
Edmonton Journal

Darryl Dyck
Portfolio entry
Freelance / The Canadian Press

John Lehmann
Portfolio entry
The Globe and Mail

Steve Russell
Portfolio entry
The Toronto Star

The finalists in the SCOOP category are:

Jill Macyshon
Manitoba's Foster Care Crisis
CTV National News

Linda Solomon Wood, Jenny Uechi, Sandy Garossino, Mychaylo Prystupa
Oil's hidden route to Harper
National Observer

Bruce Cheadle
Omnibus budget bill rewrites history to clear RCMP of potential criminal charges
The Canadian Press

Colin Perkel
Faulty Juror Eligibility Forms
The Canadian Press

The finalists in the DAILY EXCELLENCE category are:

Jorge Barrera, Damian Joseph
Lac La Ronge Fires
APTN National News

Margaret Evans
Paris Mourns
CBC Radio One – The World This Weekend

John Vennavally-Rao
Atom Smasher
CTV National News

Kim Bolan
Terror suspect was a classic loner
Vancouver Sun

Kevin Rollason
Phone Scam
Winnipeg Free Press

The finalists in the TEXT FEATURE category are:

Althia Raj
How Trudeau Won
Huffington Post Canada

Shannon Proudfoot
Jo has Alzheimer's. He's 38
Maclean's

Angela Sterritt
A Movement Rises
OpenCanada.org

Matthew Pearson
The Passenger
Ottawa Citizen

Andrea Hill
Who is it now? When sirens wail in La Loche, people can't help but wonder if it's yet another suicide
Saskatoon StarPhoenix

The finalists in the JHR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING are:

Dennis Ward, Murray Oliver
A soldier scorned
APTN Investigates

Tamar Weinstein, Lynette Fortune, Mark Kelley, Liz Rosch
Too young to lose
CBC News – The Fifth Estate

Nahlah Ayed, Tracy Seeley
Inside India's gender revolution
CBC News – The National

Joe Friesen
The perilous journey from Myanmar to freedom
The Globe and Mail

Olivia Fellows, Emily Fister, Maura Forrest, Linda Givetash, Darryl Hol, Pauline Holdsworth, Hala Kamaliddin, Gian-Paolo Mendoza, Valentina Ruiz Leotaud, Emi Sasagawa, Peter Klein, David Rummel, Kathryn Gretsinger, Dan McKinney, Chantelle Bellrichard, Britney Dennison, Kim Frank, Videsh Kapoor, Dionne Bunsha, Mohammad Ghazal, Noah Katcha, Andrew Munroe, Ashima Narain, Varun Nayar, Dhanashree Oak, Ulrich Vital Ahotondji
Out of the Shadows
University of British Columbia / Global Reporting Centre

The finalists in the CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR REPORTING are:

Melissa Ridgen
Hurting for work
APTN Investigates

Nick Purdon, Leonardo Palleja
Up close: Prison guards
CBC News – The National

Yutaka Dirks
What's at stake in the fight for $15?
Freelance / Briarpatch

Krysia Collyer, Robert Cribb, Hannah James
Code White
Global 16X9 / Toronto Star

Lee-Ann Goodman
Badly backlogged Social Security Tribunal
The Canadian Press

The finalists in the CAJ / CNW GROUP STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE are:

Amara McLaughlin, Jesse Yardley
Risky decisions for Canadian cancer patients
Calgary Journal / Mount Royal University

Cameron Perrier
A Generation Taken: Stories of the Sixties Scoop in Alberta and aboriginal child welfare today
Calgary Journal / Mount Royal University

Jacqueline Gallant, Alex Vautour, Paige LeClair, Nicole Munro, Kevin Lemieux, MacKenzie Riley, Mary Fahey, Pat McCullough, Michael Bourgeois, Scott Hems, Dylan Hackett, Jan Wong, Pat Richard
The Fog of Rape: Normalizing a Campus Crime
The New Brunswick Beacon / St. Thomas University, Fredericton

Malone Mullin
Is this the radical road to prosperity?
The Varsity Magazine / University of Toronto

Consistent with information in the entry package instructions, judges had the discretion to name between one and five finalists in each award category. There were a total 230 entries for the 2015 awards program.

Congratulations to all our finalists. Your work has been outstanding, inspiring and a reminder of how despite the unending fiscal challenges facing our industry, Canadian journalists still produce plenty of amazing, important and impactful journalism. We thank you for entering and we hope to see you in Edmonton.

The Canadian Association of Journalists is a professional organization with over 600 members across Canada. The CAJ's primary roles are public-interest advocacy work and professional development for its members.

SOURCE Canadian Association of Journalists

Nick Taylor-Vaisey, CAJ president - 647-968-2393 cell, [email protected]; Hugo Rodrigues, Awards committee co-chair - [email protected]; Dale Bass, Awards committee co-chair - [email protected]; www.caj.ca; www.facebook.com/CdnAssocJournalists; www.twitter.com/CAJ